1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for generating a file name, and more especially to a technology for generating a file name in an image capturing apparatus, such as a video camera or a digital still camera.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an image capturing apparatus, such as a video camera or a is digital still camera, data can be stored in a random access storage medium, such as a memory card, a hard disk, or an optical disk. When the data is stored in such a storage medium, it is common to store the data as a file for the purpose of user convenience.
Here, a module called a file system is used to manage the file in the storage medium. A common file system is the File Allocation Table (FAT) (non-patent document 1: Standard ECMA-107, “Volume and File Structure of Disk Cartridges for Information Interchange”). Since it is complicated to operate the file system, usually an operating system (OS) is equipped in the image capturing apparatus to implement the file system as software.
Here, when the file is stored in the storage medium equipped in the image capturing apparatus, in order to avoid bothering a user with file name designation, it is common that a program equipped in the image capturing apparatus automatically generates a file name, such as a serial number. However, this method for automatically generating a file name has a problem that, when a file in the storage medium is copied onto a personal computer (PC), the PC already has the same file name whose file has been previously copied from the storage medium. In this case, there is a risk that the new file is written over the existing file and eventually the existing file is deleted. As a result, various methods for generating a file name have been suggested to prevent the above-mentioned risk of deletion.
For example, a patent document 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-164234 publication) discloses a method for generating a directory with a name including an image-capturing time. Further, a patent document 2 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-109651 publication) discloses a method for generating a file name which is not identical with any other file name and is easily arranged in order of an image-capturing date (year, month, and date). Still further, a patent document 3 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-177646 publication) discloses a method by which a file name is not identical with any other file name as far as the file is created by the same image capturing apparatus. This means that, in the methods disclosed in patent documents 1 to 3, the image-capturing time is included in the file name in order to solve the problem of overwriting and deleting the existing file.